Brian Whitlark is the West region director of the USGA Green Section. We talked about total organic material testing of turfgrass soils. This is distinct from soil organic matter testing. Soil organic matter is measured on material that has already passed a 2 mm sieve and thus is no larger than a grain of sand. This sieving removes much of the thatch and mat and living plant material from the sample.

1. There's more about this, including definitions of various items related to this, in https://www.asianturfgrass.com/post/organic-matter-terminology-in-turfgrass-soils/
2. You can see how a soil sample is tested in this video from Brookside Labs https://youtu.be/PyL2bfdiBdE
3. Richard Forsyth from Royal Melbourne also spoke about something related to the shear strength that Brian and I discussed https://www.youtube.com/live/T-w6CQzGzKc?feature=share

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Find out more about soil tests with ATC at https://www.asianturfgrass.com/project/soil-tests/